Patriots On The Loose

KIEV, Ukraine -- The race fight in Ukraine is starting to look like a war. On one side of the front are special units under the SBU [Security Services of Ukraine] and on the other organized crime that is getting stronger.

White power graffiti in Lviv.
On 14 October, the day Ukraine first officially commemorated the anniversary of the OUN-UPA [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Ukrainian Insurgent Army] people with swastikas on their clothes marched down the streets of Kyiv along with columns of Ukrainian nationalists. Uninhibited by those around them, they demonstratively raised their arms in the requisite salute. The jubilee which President Viktor Yushchenko thought would bring the nation together only showed its defects.

Moreover, on the same night a 31-year-old Bangladeshi was killed, the murderers stealing his coat and mobile phone. That allowed the police to consider the tragedy a robbery, despite the deceased being buried after a closed-casket ceremony – his face had been that severely beaten.

And 10 days later the SBU announced it had created a special unit to fight xenophobia and ethnic intolerance. This was done on instructions from the president after he met representatives of Jewish non-governmental organizations.

In a conversation with Korrespondent, SBU press secretary Maryna Ostapenko clarified that the unit is being formed more for prevention since "incidences of xenophobia in Ukraine are not a mass phenomenon." "But in light of world trends and world experience, the decision was made that growing xenophobia is a general trend in the challenge of security," she explained.

No matter how "not mass-like" the SBU believes xenophobia to be, people are more and more often attacking others based on skin color.

Organizations fighting for purity of race and nation function openly in the country. However, there is now a precedent in a Ukrainian court of a criminal case involving racial intolerance leading to a person's death.

FIRST CASE

"Look, a negro!" these were the words spoken by a few drunk Ukrainian youths on the night of 25 October last year when they attacked 45-year-old Nigerian Mievi Godi. He, a non-white person, was simply riding with them in one carriage of a Kyiv underground train. The youths decided that was quite enough to commit murder.

Godi was beaten and stabbed with a knife. The ambulance came 40 minutes later when help was no longer needed. The murderers were detained quite quickly – because they were not careful. Now Godi's case is being heard in court.

Since a large number of witnesses testified to the words heard when the crime began, Article 161 – violating a person's rights based on his race, ethnicity or religion – is being used for the first time in Ukraine. Until this case, all other murders of non-Slavic looking people were classified as hooliganism.

"We cannot be outside later than seven o'clock at night. If you are walking alone on the street, always look back to see who is following you. The doorways must be lit and when you enter the flat [be careful because] there could be an ambush. The most important thing is to not walk on the street late at night," Edwin, Godi's acquaintance and fellow countryman, counts off the safety steps for non-Slavs.

Like Godi, Edwin came to Ukraine from Nigeria in the 1980s, studied and started a family. He speaks Russian rather well and is an officially registered business owner; he pays his taxes and his son, born in Ukraine, was recently admitted to university, Edwin notes with great pride. But the ex-Nigerian's son does not leave home after six in the evening. Because his life is in danger in many places in Kyiv.

"The underground stations Leo Tolstoy, Palats Ukrayina and Kontraktova Square near McDonald's, the Lisova stations and near the Trade University and on Independence Square. And the Polytechnic Institute," Edwin's fellow countryman Oniken [?] Johnson, who has been living in Ukraine for over 20 years, counts off places that are potentially dangerous for non-whites. He says these places are where youths from about 16 to 20 years of age dressed in military clothing and heavy boots congregate. Mainly they are young men, but sometimes there are girls, too. They usually attack without saying a word.

Edwin sadly interrupts his friend: "First they might ask: Why do you live in Ukraine? Get out of here." He was stabbed six years ago with a knife and is lucky to be alive.

"First they pick people based on their appearance. The most vulnerable groups are people who always go to the synagogue at the same time, wear strange clothes or take the same roads. People who live in dormitories for foreign students and shop for food nearby," says Iryna, describing the prey of those keepers of racial purity. She is an activist in an organization which monitors human rights and she preferred to remain anonymous.

In one recent episode of violence, female Chinese students were attacked: unknown assailants stabbed them a number of times. This happened on Kikvidze Street in central Kyiv not far from the dormitory of the National University of Technology and Design. "There are always attacks there, and constant ambushes," Iryna says.

According to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 45 percent of today's youth from 18 to 20 years of age do not want to see Jews living in Ukraine. And 18 percent of the entire population in the country would not be happy to live next to blacks. Part of these people try to make their desires reality – in particular by joining organizations.

One of them, Patriot Ukrayiny (PU), has cells in several cities and a nucleus in Kharkiv. Their Kyiv office is in the center of the capital in premises which belong to the Freedom Association. This is a well-known organization represented in the councils of a number of western Ukrainian [towns] and which took part in the recent parliamentary election. The Freedom Association did not get into Parliament, but it got 0.76 percent of the vote. Overall that is not much, but still it is eighth place and almost 200,000 votes from Ukrainians.

When asked what links PU to Oleh Tyahnybok, the Freedom Association leader, PU members cringe slightly. "The Freedom Association is a political party, PU is a public organization. We simply work together as legal entities," explains Andriy Ilyenko, one of the "patriotic" organization's activists.

PU and the Freedom Association are united in a hostility felt towards dark-skinned foreigners moving to Ukraine. They explain the reasons for this enmity quite simply: in their opinion, the migrants threaten the future of the Ukrainian nation. "People settle down here, bringing their diseases and their enemy culture which we do not accept, and they do not accept out culture; they set up their ethnic districts here," Ilyenko argues calmly and convinced.

He believes that essentially a hidden policy of genocide against Ukrainians is under way in Ukraine. And he compares it to the Great Famine of 1932 and 1933.

Widely varying methods are used to fight the migrants: they march, hand out leaflets and even carry out "hunting raids," tracking down illegal immigrants. In particular, in May this year Patriot members captured six Vietnamese.

"It was the organization's own independent initiative," relates activist Serhiy Bevs, "We were given the lead by our brothers from another organization, but they did not take part in the act directly. We handed them [the Vietnamese] over to the authorities and they deported them from the country. There is a video on the site."

A source told Korrespondent that after the act, the police opened two criminal cases – one on deporting the illegal immigrants and the second against the activists for illegally depriving people of freedom. But the second case was crushed even before it reached court.

But the Patriot members do not focus only on illegal immigrants, they also look at those who have obtained citizenship and even those born in Ukraine. "All these mixed marriages between Ukrainians and the members of other … other types – because from a scientific point of view that is what they are, so let's use scientific terms," another Patriot activist, Volodymyr Shpara, says hotly, "These mixed marriages … if these people are so underdeveloped culturally that they let themselves fall to such a level, well then we are going to give them the chance to go down even lower than that level."

Shpara explained right away how that should look: "Let them go to the homelands of these Afro-Ukrainians, as you call them, and there they can fall to their level.

"We don't need them," he concludes.

PU is not a poor organization. In the summer it financed a military camp for its members, so-called education schools. Participants got good uniforms and equipment. And they carry out events beyond the capital as well. For example, they tried to thwart the Korea-2007 festival of Korean culture in Chernivtsi.

There are other organizations in Kyiv thirsting "to rid the country of other people." For example the well-known Ukrainian Movement Against Illegal Immigration (UMAII), which is most developed in Crimea. "The Tatars came to Crimea in the 1990s. They are migrants. They are not long-time residents," UMAII director Yaroslav Dunayev is convinced. He is happy to talk about how the fight is going, supporting himself with propaganda.

His group acts as a public organization. "Membership dues and what we earn at paid political rallies, that goes into our funds," he says not ashamed of UMAII's source of income, "You know 99.9 percent of rallies are paid for, all these public protests [meaning rally organizers pay people to show up]."

Beside UMAII and PU there are many organizations in Ukraine based on the skinhead persuasion which promote the idea of Eurasianism. It is harder for them to operate since the government sees them as apologists for restoring the Russian empire.

PU is not threatened by accusations of chauvinism. It positions itself as a patriotic organization. Its members speak Ukrainian, become indignant when Ukrainian national symbols on Hoverla [highest peak in Ukraine] are desecrated and take part in all sorts of marches, from those to protect the white race to those in support of the OUN-UPA.

It was at one such march that the youths who killed Godi met.

Source: BBC Monitoring